Picture this: Concert tickets on your mobile Phone!

A new "m-commerce" service has moved to exploit existing bar-code scanning and mobile-handset technology, and the Patronaat Popstage (Haarlem) is the first concert hall which is going to use this service to process payment for their upcoming concerts.

The patented technology, "mobi-tickets," will be exploited in cooperation with Ticketing partner Paylogic. It sends a bar code to a mobile phone as a picture message, which can then be scanned by a typical point-of-sale system. The barcode can be displayed on any handset that can view picture messaging, which accounts for about 80 percent of the market. If the mobile phone cannot display picture messages, a unique number is sent, which is manually keyed in by the staff. Therefore, the customers will receive an SMS containing a bar code, called a mobi-ticket, with confirmation of ticket and event details. At the point of entry, the bar code on their mobile phone will be scanned by the ticket attendant using Denso scanning hardware.

The main advantage of Mobi-tickets is that the tickets can be delivered to the customer within minutes of the booking being made, and can be cancelled and reissued effortlessly. Furthermore, customers do not experience any problems in relation to papered- or e-tickets which they forget or which cannot be printed, because people always have their mobile phone with them!

Although, the possibility for those who would like to continue to receive a papered concert ticket will remain, this technology is set to become mainstream in the ticketing business…